Red Pine candles

[spunog]

Hello experts.

I started this Japanese red pine from seed last year so it is aproximately 1 year old. It has developed candles. Ive read all about the candle pinching stuff but I was wondering is that just for established trees? Should I leave these candles alone seeing as the tree is still getting started and has a good few years of growing before any work can be done with it ?

Photos attached.

thanks

Spunog

 

[Brian Van Fleet]

It will be several years before candle pruning is necessary. Let these buds grow out for a couple years, and start to develop a trunk.

 

[Harunobu]

If you let it grow naturally you may get spokewheels seperated with long internodes. Main aim will be to develop a tapering trunk with good nebari. For that you need lots of branches that can be either sacrificial or ones that need to stay on and stay fine during all that time to be used as final branches. So it may indeed be the case that you want to prune some very long candles at some point. You can still get backbudding on older branches if it still retains needles. I think that is for like 3 years or so.

But normally candle pincing and pruning is maintainance because you don't want the spokewheels and long internodes to grow from your finely ramificated finished bonsai. Doesn't seem like this one needs it at all at this point. More photosynthetic foliage is faster growth, more roots, more backbudding when you do need to prune something to induce backbudding.

Seems you already have some branches to work with. You should normally defenitely slow down growth at some point to get the branches you need since this is key. You will need to have both branches for the final design and branches that are going to be purely sacrificial.

 

[daveskib]

The only reason you would want to do this on such a young tree is to get some low branching i would think. I did that on a seedling and have lots of low branching now i am letting it grow.